1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a multi-source order request servicing system and more particularly relates to a system and method for receiving, servicing, and fulfilling order requests which supports at least one order request management system sources. The multi-source order request servicing system obtains and provides a response to each order request by integrating information from one or more sources.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the stream of commerce, numerous commercial transactions occur between multiple parties to enable a manufacturer to provide an item to a customer. Historically many, if not all, of these commercial transactions were insular and discreet, with respect to the other commercial transactions in the stream of commerce. Each involved business traditions and customs uniquely tailored for the commercial transaction at hand. These traditions and customs between merchants in the ordinary course of business evolved over centuries of dealing. As a result, the traditions and customs for any given commercial transaction often differ markedly from those associated with other commercial transactions. So pervasive were these traditions and customs that the first successful attempt to bring uniformity to commercial transactions did not occur until the 1950s, with the creation of the Uniform Commercial Code. To this day, however, the Uniform Commercial Code has not been adopted by every state in the Union. Uniformity in commercial transactions is lacking.
The advent of the Internet has intensified the need to bring uniformity with respect to certain aspects of commercial transactions. The Internet typically includes a plurality of users employing client terminals to order request information from a remote server computer. The remote server computer may then collect information from a variety of other computer systems to fulfill the user's order request, and presents the information to the user. To facilitate the transfer, the client terminals have a web browser that presents a web page containing information obtained from a server, and web servers store information using a standard protocol. One popular collection of servers uses a standardized Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to provide information and is known as the “World Wide Web.”
The information is typically presented as web pages written as text with standardized formatting and control symbols known as Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML). HTML provides basic document formatting and allows a server to specify “links” to other servers and files. Use of an HTML-compliant browser involves specification of a link via a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). Upon such specification, the user's client terminal makes a TCP/IP order request to the server identified in the link and receives an HTML file that is interpreted by the browser. An electronic HTML document made up of one or more web pages may be displayed on the client's terminal.
A drawback with the available technology employed to take advantage of the Internet concerns the diversity of computing systems involved in any given commercial transaction. Commercial transactions do not have a standard protocol which every computer system involved in a commercial transaction can understand. Ensuring compatibility between the various computer systems of the parties involved in the commercial transaction has proven daunting. The compatibility problem is exacerbated when attempting to perform commercial transactions involving the myriad of contractual rights and obligations that may exist between the parties.
A merchant, such as a merchant using the Internet to sell its goods and services, faces substantial challenges in obtaining information from the various parties involved in a commercial transaction. For instance, the merchant may not be the manufacturer of the goods it sells, and fulfilling orders for goods may involve complex supply and distribution chains including many other business partners (“suppliers”). Furthermore, the merchant may purchase goods or services from a supplier that does not directly supply the goods or services, but that is an intermediary business having its own supply and distribution chain. Information from all businesses in the supply chain involved in fulfilling an order would enable the merchant to provide complete, timely, and accurate responses to order requests from customers.
Accurate order information is likely stored in the suppliers' “order request management systems”, which are order request management systems that deal with managing orders for goods and services. Each supplier's order request management system in a supply chain is a potential source of order information. However, these order request management systems may be incompatible with the order request management system used by the merchant. The merchant desires access to timely and accurate order information from its suppliers' order request management systems. What is needed is a multi-source order request servicing system that allows the merchant's systems to integrate information from other parties' order request management systems to obtain complete, timely, and accurate information. An “order request servicing system” is a type of multi-source order request servicing system that deals with integrating information about orders from multiple sources in the supply chain, including suppliers' order request management systems.
A merchant may also prefer that its complex supply and distribution chain be invisible to its customers, so that the merchant appears to be directly selling to its customers using a “virtual direct sales model.” To use a virtual direct sales model, the merchant desires timely and accurate information from the multiple sources in all levels of the supply chain. The multiple sources in all levels of the supply chain include the order request management systems of the lower-level suppliers that supply goods or services to an upper-level supplier or reseller in a multi-level supply chain.
In a virtual direct sales model, the merchant integrates the order status information from multiple sources in the supply chain to present a complete response to an order from its customers. With accurate and timely integrated information, the merchant can serve as the single point of contact with its customers, hiding the fact that the merchant uses a complex supply chain to fulfill customer orders.
Most order request management systems do not address the problems of dealing with a complex chain of suppliers and do not provide the capability to transmit and receive information from a variety of supplier computer systems even in a single-level supply chain. Support for obtaining information from suppliers in a multi-level supply chain is not generally available. Existing order request management systems do not provide complete, timely, and accurate information needed to enable a virtual direct sales model.
In addition, most order request management systems are custom-written or modified to deal with the commercial transactions and business relationships of a particular business. These systems are usually not capable of managing orders for more than one business. In particular, these order request management systems are usually not capable of respecting the business relationships of each of a plurality of businesses sharing an order request servicing system. Sharing multi-source order request servicing systems such as an order request servicing system is especially desirable in the Internet environment, where merchants may not have or wish to expend the resources to develop their own multi-source order request servicing systems.
What is needed is a multi-source order request servicing system that allows the merchant's systems to communicate with multiple sources, including other parties' order request management systems. The multi-source information integration and routing system to integrates complete, timely, and accurate information from the multiple sources in response to a order request such as an order from a customer. The multi-source order request servicing system should be capable of managing order requests involving multiple businesses in a complex supply chain, while respecting the business relationships of each business within the supply chain. Furthermore, the order request servicing system should be flexible enough to be used by an intermediary information integrating organization to integrate information for more than one merchant. The multi-source order request servicing system should enable a merchant to use a virtual direct sales model to its customers. Finally, the multi-source order request servicing system should be capable of being chained to other multi-source order request servicing systems to enable direct access to all suppliers' order request management systems in a multi-level supply chain.